Learning to sew?

[amphigori.livejournal.com]

I make dolls, or 'soft creatures' as I tend to call them. They range from monsters to voodoo dolls to bears. I pretty much make stuff up as I go and I've always hand-stitched them. The novelty of that has worn off (and the quality of my hand-sewing is questionable). So I'm considering buying a sewing machine.

Question: should I take a sewing class first? Or is it fairly easy to learn how to sew on a machine. Particularly given that I'm just going to be doing straight-ish line stitching to make the bodies of my soft creatures?

Thank you in advance! :) P.S. I live in NZ and there aren't many sewing classes here in Wellington. So I'm kinda hoping you'll tell me to just learn as I go!